Handmade Photobook Week: Dawn Surratt

Handmade Photobook Week: Dawn Surratt by Vicente CayuelaAugust 26, 2025

The Griffin Museum of Photography has recently assembled a wonderful exhibition dedicated to handmade photobooks, curated by Sangyon Joo, founder of Datz Press and Datz Museum in Gwangju, South Korea. The first of its kind at the New England museum, the showcase is dedicated solely to handmade photo books, turning its gaze to the tactile delicacy of these wonderful artifacts. The 20 books selected for their outstanding craftsmanship and powerful authorial voices are a sensorial feast, reminding us of the importance of the artist’s hand in the dissemination of independent photographic media.

Lens-based artist, publisher, and photobook maker, Laila Nahar, was invited to select her top picks as a guest critic at the exhibition. This week, we take a look at her Top 6 selections. Today we present Dawn Surratt‘s beautifully somber project, Sweeping the Graves (2018 – ongoing). Originally a collection of photographic prints and assemblages, Surratt’s project now takes the shape of a more intimate memento. Published by Potato Dog Press in 2024, the work is an elegiac reflection of more than two decades working with hospice patients and families.

Juror Laila Nahar states: Sweeping the Graves by Dawn Surratt is a humbling experience. From the title of the book to the images, to every word and the spaces in between – the book left me in silence. In my mind’s eyes, I was still seeing the flying cloth, the birds over the cornfields, and the weathered hands. I could hear the whispers and conversations and the void. Dawn turned her experience in hospice work and end of life journeys into a beautifully crafted artist book that resonates with us all. I could feel how deeply she cared when making this book. A masterpiece indeed.

Dawn Surratt earned a B.A. in Studio Arts from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Georgia. Her years of work with dying patients in hospice settings is the backbone of her imagery combining photographs with photography based book structures, installations, and objects as visual meditations exploring concepts of grief, transition, healing and spirituality.

Her work has been widely published for book covers and publications such as The Sun, BETA Magazine, Lenscratch, SHOTS, Diffusion and The Hand. She has exhibited in galleries across the United States including The Center for Fine Art Photography, Southeast Center for Photography, A.Smith Gallery, Photoplace Gallery and the Griffin Museum of Photography. She is a 2016, 2020 and 2024 Critical Mass Finalist and her work is in collections across the United States including the Peabody Essex Museum and the Rubinstein Library at Duke University, Archive of Documentary Arts. She is a 2018 nominee for the Royal Photography Society’s 100 Heroines. She has published two books including a handmade limited edition of Sweeping The Graves in 2024.

Dawn is a full time artist living in rural North Carolina and teaches multi-media process and photography object work through Maine Media Workshops and College. You can find her roaming the countryside with her camera, her husband, and their Pembroke Welsh Corgi Winston who doubles as their photography assistant.

Follow Dawn on Instagram: @dawn_surratt

Laila Nahar: What motivated you to work on such a profound feeling (universal grief, end of life journey) and turn it into an artist book? How important was it to make Sweeping the Graves by hand as opposed to getting it through a commercial publisher?

Dawn Surratt: The reasons for making the book are kind of two fold I think. It was important to me that I show my deep gratitude to the hospice patients and families I worked with over the years and honor their lives in a meaningful and personal way. And in many ways, I am still processing my emotions from bearing witness to their sacred goodbyes and wanted a space to put them. Making this book by hand was a practice of meditation and catharsis as I thought about the people while making it. My hope is that this gratitude translates into the book. It was important to me that the mark of the hand was as personal and intimate as the stories and images that it contained. The experience of making this book helped me give shape to the quiet lessons and moments of grace that I had the privilege of witnessing.

LN: Within the book form, what informs your choices of design and layout as a flutter book for Sweeping the Graves?

DS: I wanted the book form to physically embody the idea that these stories of reflection and connection are transient. The flutter book structure allows the book to open fully, away from the spine, and sort of breathe in a way that’s very deliberate. That openness reflects all of life in its very ephemeral way. It’s a structure that became more than just a container for content but more like a living gesture that asks the reader to slow down, to be present, and to accept that nothing here is fixed. The flutter book also suggests movement and impermanence, like memory. It invites quiet, almost meditative engagement, which I felt was right for the subject.

Since the material was heavy, I wanted the size of the book to be small and intimate. The covers were collagraphed with texture to imply stone and add a rich, haptic sense. Whenever possible, I like to invite the viewer to collaborate with my art, so I added a piece of Joss paper in each book for the reader to burn in memory of their loved one. The color palette is muted and quiet to give space to the reader for reflection.

LN: I see a big role of texts or poems in your book; what is your process incorporating text and image in a book?

DS: It felt that both image and text were equally important in this book and I used them as interwoven languages to express the complexity of loss. I thought a lot about silence, texture and pacing and how space can also speak either through its expansiveness or its lack thereof. The stories are not fully formed but more like fragments of memory which is exactly how I remember hearing them, experiencing them and then wrote them down. And I think the freedom of using a more spare way of telling stories gave me the flexibility to try and evoke absence and the passing of time in the way that they are used on the page. I wanted the images and the text to form spaces that hold both the sorrow and the remembrance.

LH: Who are your inspirations in ‘artist book’? What is your dream project? What are you reading lately?

DS: There is no shortage of inspiration out there when it comes to artists and book objects. I love the work of Glen Skien from Silent Parrot Press, Jody Alexander, Clarissa Sligh, Juanan Requena and Raymond Meeks to name just a very few but honestly, the list just goes on and on. There is so much innovation and beauty to get absorbed into and I love the way that photographers have been finding their own unique voices self-publishing their books and zines.

I couldn’t say what my dream project would be, but I do know that I want to continue to explore how books, assemblages and installations intersect with one another and how to continually engage the viewer in an active and intimate way. Outdoor and immersive installations are super interesting to me especially if they provide an opportunity for ritual and/or interaction in an unexpected place.

I’m not reading a whole lot lately because honestly, my brain has been so distracted and I am finding it really hard to stay focused. But I do have a few books that I am kind of grazing on right now: The Work of Art by Adam Moss, the spring 2025 issue of aperture no. 258 and Devotions by Mary Oliver.

Thank you for this opportunity to talk with you about my book, Laila. I greatly appreciate it!